


42°25'00.3"N 83°58'43.3"W

by manallakhuna



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Time Skips, alice and luther implied bad end, but only if you read the second chapter, but the first chapter is technically also standalone, just sort of all around implied bad end, not tagging MCD though because.... implied
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:21:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22387099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manallakhuna/pseuds/manallakhuna
Summary: Markus just wants Connor to be safe. They'll meet each other there. 42°25'00.3"N 83°58'43.3"W. After everything settles down, Markus will find him there.
Relationships: Connor & Markus (Detroit: Become Human), Connor/Markus (Detroit: Become Human)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	42°25'00.3"N 83°58'43.3"W

They’re going to meet at exactly 42°25'00.3"N 83°58'43.3"W. 

He can remember the night they’d decided in absolute clarity. Markus had looked him in the eye and firmly told him it would be their very last resort. If they’d gotten separated, if the revolution took on a life of its own, if, if, if- he said. Blue and green had shone marvelously, seriously, lovingly. From his database, Connor had always thought love would make one feel warm and gooey, every time. Like a fresh crème brûlée, waiting for the outer shell to be broken into. He’s learned sometimes love is like hot steel. Blinding, sharp. He’s learned a lot since that fateful night. 

The Manfred Manor had looked quiet, only dim lights coming from the top floor and what he supposed was likely a living room. CyberLife had just informed Connor he’d be replaced. By a better model- one they said would be able to find out more, accomplish more. Hank and him had also been taken off the case due to FBI involvement, and he hadn’t even enough evidence to track down Jericho. 

He still isn’t sure what he was really looking for that night. 

The household AI had greeted him, but noted without an invitation he would have to either contact the homeowner directly or ring the doorbell. He didn’t move. Why would he? What information would Carl Manfred, a man deep into old age, who hadn’t seen Markus since he’d been shot really have to say? What lead was he expecting? Was there really a purpose left? A directive? His hands began to freeze. 

It must have been quite some time before Markus wandered into the front hall and likely by chance had spotted Connor’s shadow gracing their front step. 

“You’re the RK800. The deviant hunter. Connor, I think it was. You haven’t moved and I’ve stood here for almost two minutes now. I can’t help but wonder why.” 

Even then, even threatened, his voice carried a certain warmth, a certain understanding and candor. He found it hard to meet the deviant leader’s eyes at the time. How that would change. How he would develop.

“They’re going to replace me.” He’d said, unblinking, almost staring through the android in front of him. His previous directives didn’t even apply. There was no prompt to subdue Markus.

Markus’s face had been so expressive, so particular. It makes him smile where he leans against the tree where they’d planned to meet even now. Like a human approaching a wild deer, he supposes. Soft, unthreatening, a little shocked, and desperate to win the other over. It was probably the correct choice. Markus always had a way with people, with words. 

“But you’re _here_ , Connor.” He’d said, simply. 

It was as if Markus had known what was about to happen before Connor could even form the thought. To Markus, a decision had already been reached, Connor was just the last to know. 

“I’m here.” He echoed. 

He hadn’t realized he’d said it aloud, and it echoes off the trees in the clearing. The swallow that had been picking at the ground near him startles, flapping off into the treetops. The forest around him is mostly silent, but if Connor focuses on his surroundings, rather than the memory he’s so deeply entrenched in, he can hear the distant sound of a small inlet river and its lake. 

He’s found it hard to take himself out of his memories, lately. His processors can’t stop running and running and running. A prototype detective like him wasn’t meant to sit idle and conscious for so long.

Not that he knows how long he’s been out here, really. He’s shut down his connectivity and internal clock modules. The walk itself had totaled seventeen hours, eighteen minutes, and forty-six seconds. Days upon days have passed since then, but Connor doesn’t count. He stopped after the first twelve days of waiting. He’d rather look back than consciously observe in front of him. It’s too much. He had originally vowed to track every second, but the anxiety of the wait had overridden his personal wants fairly quickly. Deviancy, it seems, has that effect on him. 

His vision had filled with red, after that. The irrational prompt to stay there. Stay with Markus, and not return to CyberLife. The mandatory task his programming was expecting of him. 

**_RETURN TO CYBERLIFE._ **

Bold text screaming at him through a sea of red, Markus’s face, his outstretched hand behind it. A staccato beat went by before Connor had gently reached through, sliding his hand into the offered one, and for the first time, he felt warmth. The wall had shattered like breakaway glass, fragments glittering, before hitting the ground around him. The red almost a figment of his own creation, a ghost of a barrier set long ago by humans that could have never anticipated him- could never have anticipated them.

Fear and affection and existence had slammed into him with the force of a moving train, and he found himself on the floor at Markus’s feet, hand still holding on firmly. His other arm had snaked around Connor’s back, and soon the deviant leader himself was on the floor and held Connor in an embrace. He’d never conceptualized comfort before, really. 

“It’s alright. It will soon get better with time. It will,” Markus’s voice soothed, “Soon.” 

His eyes chance up at the sky above him. A thousand tiny lights blink back at him from the void. Their presence is only a marginally comforting. It’s nighttime, and it slipped right by him. He spends some time in the present, cataloguing the stars he can see from his position, their distance from Earth, if they have any habitable planets in their galaxy. His mind wanders quickly back to times before, however, flitting through snippets of memories distractedly, like he’s used the ViewMaster Carl keeps tucked away in one of their bookshelves for nostalgia. 

Markus, as he sat by the window, Plato in his hand. He flipped through the pages slowly, actually taking time to digest every word. The way his eyes focused on the pages, on the world outside. North took over Jericho for a little bit so their leader could decompress while they restocked before the next big thing happened. Things were quiet, but would only stay that way for a matter of weeks. The way Markus’s eyes then focused on him, intent, observing. He’d shifted to look out the window then, too flustered to make continued eye contact. He hadn't really understood why he felt so tense around the other, yet. 

The way Markus’s hands hovered over Connor’s own when he decided one evening to teach Connor to play- because the arts are a way to explore yourself, explore how you feel and process emotions- he’d explained. The omnipresent warmth of his hands, his presence blanketed him, protected and guided him. 

A portrait of him that Markus had done, staring up at the viewer in askance, brows set, eyes hopeful. Prepared but optimistic. Paint smudged on Markus’s jaw, wholly identifying desire, admiration, affection. 

Green and blue eyes crinkled at the corners when Connor suggested he was technically a piece of evidence, and that perhaps when everything blows over, Connor would have to arrest him for obstruction of justice. 

“Was that a joke? From Connor himself?” He’d asked, then, teasingly, and then warmth again- hands on hands and lips on lips. 

Markus’s hands as they confined his own, body pressed between the other android’s chest and the wall. The sensation of lips on his neck, every small measure of pressure grounded him, kept him present. Knowing at the time that things were going to change, and change quickly, soon. Escalating tensions that had driven them closer, desperately so.

The announcement of the camps opening. Storm-laced eyes that had changed the color of the entire home, sucked of its saturation. The humans, their fears. The sentiment that North had spread amongst Jericho’s people, retaliatory and armed. Markus’s refusal of his offer to go to the CyberLife tower, and his quick hands set to assemble a pack for Connor to bring with him. To their spot, coordinates that were hastily re-transmitted- just to make sure- with a press of their foreheads together and a promise.

The rain dripping on the same spot after they had parted, cool and unfamiliar. 

Kara, a deviant he had previously met from Jericho, standing on top of the barricade, as her eyes blazed with grief and steel, damaged irreparably in parts, human bodies propped against cars and benches and signs like a promise. The two androids she’d travelled with were nowhere to be seen. It seemed the humans may have feared too late, and harmed too many. It was the last transmission he’d received from the news before shutting down those components. 

Grief changes people, humans and androids alike. He’s come to realize that. 

He’d seen grief rip victims, families, suspects, even Hank apart before- but there is a unique difference to observing an emotion and experiencing it. He’d seen people isolate, seen people have full breakdowns, go on the warpath to reach some satisfaction in it all. 

Perhaps androids aren’t well equipped to deal with grief at all, being so newly thrust upon the world. Having information beyond any adults with the emotional intelligence of a well behaved child made it impossible to process the emotion in a productive way.

Even so, he can’t find it in him to regret his deviancy. 

A warm flash of Markus’s lips on his pulls to the forefront of his mind just for a moment, as a light shower taps on his upturned face. 

His head tics back and forth multiple times as he cranes his neck back down from the sky to take stock of himself. Absurdly, his chest is circled by ivy, and it’s daytime. The winter has thawed over and given way to new life. Vines upon vines weave themselves between plates and components alike, over the thirium packs in the bag beside him, finding purchase in every surface available- growing, changing, expanding.

English ivy is an invasive species, his offline database supplies. 

They’re going to meet at exactly 42°25'00.3"N 83°58'43.3"W. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! This turned out super depressing! So that's. Cool. Second chapter will be up shortly, it's a happy end that I'm tacking on because jesus christ. Technically this first chapter is. The whole thing, a standalone. But if the second chapter makes you feel fuzzy that's what it's there for.


End file.
